Do not submit

Do you have enough faith in you religious convictions and your belief in the First Amendment to refuse to submit to the murderous Muslim religious zealots who not only believe, but actually preach, that it is okay to murder innocent people simply because you perceive yourself to be offended by something?

I’d like to think I do. My friend Peter Ingemi, also known as DaTechGuy, proved he does. After a fatwa was issued by one of those murderous Muslim religious zealots calling on the Muslim youth in America and Europe to kill the director, the producer and the actors and everyone who helped and promoted the so-called film, “Innocence of Muslims,” Peter posted this video titled, “I will not submit to Islam.”

Peter describes his video as follows:

“My response to the declaration of FATWA on anyone who makes a film insulting Islam, come and get me you murderous bastards, I won’t give up my 1st Amendment rights I’m a American.”

Before you say you are that courageous think about the ordeal the murderous Muslim religious zealots have put some folks through when they have been unable to actually have them murdered. Think about Salman Rushdie, who has been living in hiding and under police protection since 1989. Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death following the publication of Rushdie’s 1988 prize winning book, The Satanic Verses.

Like Peter, Salman Rushdie is courageous. He eloquently denounces the murderous Muslim zealots. Here is some of what he had to say during an interview broadcast yesterday on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”:

“STEVE INSKEEP: What do you think when you hear about violence in the Muslim world, because people perceive that their religion has been insulted?

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Yeah. Well, what I would say, in a general sense, is that I feel that something has gone wrong inside the Muslim world, because I can remember – within my living memory – when some of these now-beleaguered, embattled cities like Beirut, Tehran, Damascus, Baghdad, when these were cosmopolitan, outward-looking, cultured cities which were interested in the rest of the world and were much more like open societies.

And the fact that, in the last half-century, these cultures seem to have slid backwards into medievalism and repression is one of the – I think it’s one of the great self-inflicted wounds. And out of that comes the rise of this new, much harsher Islam, come all these phenomena that you’re talking about: the thin-skinnedness, the paranoia, the ease with which violence is engaged in, the readiness to believe that it’s OK to kill people if you declare yourself offended by something. This is the mindset of the fanatic, the mindset of the tyrant. And it’s a real shame that it seems to have spread so widely across the Muslim world.

INSKEEP: You’re saying that it says more about the perpetrators of violence than it does about whatever was written that offended them.

RUSHDIE: Yes, of course. Of course it does. I mean, I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It’s very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime. I mean, it’s quite clear that this YouTube film is a disgraceful, shoddy little thing. And it’s, I think, perfectly proper to condemn it and the people who made it. But to murder people who had nothing to do with it because you deem yourself insulted and therefore other people’s blood can randomly be spilled, that’s clearly a deeply uncivilized attitude [Emphasis added].”